Charity Work

I spent yesterday doing some charity work - it's just what I do, I'm a good guy, I love helping out where I can. I was accompanied in my effort by the lovely and untiring Becki and Victoria. Harvey was also there.

It was at the Regent Centre in Christchurch that my diligent toil took place, and quickly I found this was an odd place; run by swathes of the elderly and one younger, tubby man with a good few inches of beard dropping from his chin. With him, I put a couple of desk backstage - manual labour, I'll do anything for charity - where he decided the best course of action would be to tell me 'people like putting things on desks'. I was rather taken aback by this revelation and his distracted demeanour so I quickly left to pursue another, less creepy, line of work.

As the matinée audience shuffled in - and this really was a shuffle, it was the largest group of the O.A.P.s I had ever seen - I grabbed a bucket and set to collecting some change for Help for Heroes, but only after learning that to shake a bucket whilst collecting is an illegal offence, so I embarked on a silent collection.

Here, the differences in people become painfully obvious; the generous return your eye contact and smile and begin an arduous journey towards you, every step seeming to knock the breath from them, but they persevere and when they get to me they gave anything from £1 to £20.

Then you had the people who had already given but were desperate to come across as generous, so they'd approach you and tell you what they'd done, be it giving montly or just to another bucketeer. To these people I wasn't sure what to say, 'well done'?, 'thank you'? I just went with a laugh and hoped they'd leave. It usually worked.

But it didn't for one chap. I was standing there with my bucket, trying to attract some interest for my cause when a mysterious hand grasped my arm. I looked to see the owner of said hand and a face was thrust very close to mine as he thought to tell me, in his American drone, some of his own charity work. He'd set up a website that has raised £900 for Help for Heroes last year and he seemed rather irate about the fact that our 'heroes' are in the Middle East. So he began a rant about their presence there, as if I had ordered the warrant to ship out thousands of troops. Again, I had no idea what to say. Should I have induldged him in conspiracies of oil-greed, or religion-control and New World Order nonsense, or should I have thank him profusely for his effort and bid him a good day? Probably. But all I managed to give him in return was a vague 'yeeaah'. After this the harassment ended and I went back to smiling at the elderly.

The final group are the (typically younger - so in this case middle aged) people who feel that simply buying the ticket and coming is showing enough support. Which, in a way, it is, but these people look at you with such scorn that it's hard to trust your own motives. They would deviate their paths completely to avoid me, or they'd walk past with their heads down and pausing their conversations. I shall not berate this catagory too much, as I fear I may well fall into it. That's right, despite being such a generous giver of my time I am usually too embarrassed when fellow bucketeers approach me to give anything. So I would typically adopt many of the techniques observed yesterday.


After the matinée performance came the evening performance (oddly) and the now-largest group of O.A.P.s I've ever seen. It was truely daunting see that many grey-haired old dears haul themselves inside. Up until that day, I had never really understood the necessity of hand rails on stairs. So many of these slowly decaying people had to grip onto the structure as if it was an integral part of their being and embark on the expedition up the arduous 6 steps. One lady I found particulalry strange; physically, she didn't seem impaired or tired by this exertion, but she would only do 2 or 3 steps at a time, she reaches the final step and just stood for several seconds. Gazing forward as if a queue has materialised before her, but the path was clear. Then, after an uncomfortably long time, she took that final step up and continued walking on the flat without a problem.


Part of me relishes the day when I can do things like this and not feel it to be even slightly antisocial, but until then I will enjoy the relative bliss of fully functioning limbs.

Apologies for the awful picture - my phone doesn't much like taking pictures in the dark.

 
With regards to to show itself, it was brilliant. A full swing band, complete with 4 trumpuppeteers, 3 tromboners and 3 saxophonists, really gave of a brilliant sound.  I was never a big fan of big bands, but I feel I may have been converted. So thanks to John Mac for doing the night and 'Swing Unlimited Big Band' for impressing me so much.


This blog's been quite a long one, so I'll think I'll end it there.


In other news, I just realised I was writing with this pen...